Surveillance Makes You Paranoid (The Nation)

[marmar]

article | posted March 28, 2007 (web only)
Surveillance Makes You Paranoid
Nicholas von Hoffman


Was it scoop or was it plant?

The New York Times certainly thought it had a scoop with its big headline on top of a front-page story leading the paper. It read "City Police Spied Broadly Before G.O.P. Convention--Covert Operations Across Nation and Globe Investigated Protestors Plans in '04."

The Times reported, "For at least a year before the 2004 Republican National Convention, teams of undercover New York City police officers traveled to cities across the country, Canada and Europe to conduct covert observations of people who planned to protest at the convention, according to police records and interviews.... These included members of street theater companies, church groups and antiwar organizations, as well as environmentalists and people opposed to the death penalty, globalization and other government policies. Three New York City elected officials were cited in the reports."

This is the latest of a cascade of reports that police at every level of government are spying, photographing, wiretapping, snooping, tracking and labeling thousands upon thousands of people. Each of these reports reaches the public with the fanfare of a journalistic coup. Intrepid investigative reporters are supposed to have dug out these secret police activities, and no doubt the reporters themselves think that is what happened.

But did it?

Is everybody in police work incapable of keeping a secret? From the FBI, the CIA, the NSA all the way out to the NYPD, we get a never-ending stream of stories about what are said to be secret activities. At some point, however, you have to begin to wonder. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070409/von_hoffman2

[bonito]

1. Fear for the fearful n/t